


Executioner

by Maluria



Series: Faith and Steel [1]
Category: Dieselpunk - Fandom
Genre: Dieselpunk, Fantasy, Original work - Freeform, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 20:22:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11676405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maluria/pseuds/Maluria





	Executioner

The Bewachen estate was busy tonight.

Guests from every Reman noble house packed the ostentatious halls of the manor. On the surface it appeared as a time of celebration and joy. Children ran in the gardens and played carefree of any worries. The women laughed delicately while sipping on imported wines and tasting expensive dishes, all while the men discussed important affairs of state, such as trade deals and the many wars the Reman Ascendancy was engaged in. Guardsmen and servants laughed and smiled as their masters told them of the silliness of the lower classes, and of how lucky they were to be in service of their masters. All it seemed, was just fine.

In truth, it was hardly so. The ladies quietly judged each other and studied their “friends” for any secrets they might be hiding, eager for a scandal to whisper with hostile undertones. The noblem    en and lords formed alliances against mutual enemies and arranged for “accidents” to be inflicted on each other. The guards and the slaves only feigned appreciation, all they wanted to do was to put their hands around the necks of as many pompous nobles as they could. Only the children were truly innocent. Even then, their elders scowled silently as many from rivaling houses played and danced, the troubles between their families completely lost upon the children.

However, for all the aristocracy’s political maneuvering, there was one rule they all were forced to abide by: do not cross the Inquisition.

Well, at least everyone but the Bewachens.

The Bewachens had the city guard in their pocket, and had begun making subtle power plays to gain more control over the city. Political rivals began to end up in prison, all of them to have suddenly been exposed as cooperating with Rema’s enemies, or worshipping heretical gods. It was very sudden to the Reman authorities, in fact, many of them had been involved with higher affairs of the state. Many suspected foul play, but could not speak out, for fear of retaliation. It was perfectly fine however, the noble houses were content to let another show the Bewachen’s the error of their ways:

The Inquisition.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Liraethe sat on the roof of the Bewachen dining hall, idly sharpening her massive sword. It was always an occasion when the Executioners were loosed on something that wasn’t a shoggoth or something that wasn’t suitably malformed, and she wanted her sword to be nice and sharp. Liraethe wanted to have fun with this tonight, it was always an occasion whenever the Executioners were called into the Reman capital, Tyria.

Of course Abbot would be upset at her own little celebration, “The Inquisition is intolerant of distractions” and all that. This would bother Liraethe if she actually gave a damn about what he said half the time. The old man meant well but he would come off as excessively preachy most of the time. Speaking of which…

There he was, the slightly balding hair and forehead tattoos made him stick out in the crowd, and that wasn’t even taking his voluminous robes or the way he walked, hunched and leaning on a cane, into account. He flitted in and out of various groups of nobles, making polite conversation. Those he approached feigned delight, but deep down Liraethe knew what they felt, twisting and writhing at their insides. It was the Inquisition’s most effective weapon: fear.

At any moment someone could be whisked away by the Inquisition. At any thought they could quietly snip the undesirables of Rema like a gardener would trim a hedge. The nobles all thought, that perhaps the Inquisition would replace Lord Hans Bewachen with another, one more easily manipulated, after all, the Bewachens had the city guard in their pocket, what could a shadowy group of religious zealots hope to do against that many men?

Liraethe smiled to herself at the idea as she absentmindedly continued sharpening her sword.. For all their claims of being better bred, nobles sure could act like idiots. She could barely suppress laughter imagining the looks on the Bewachen’s faces as all their hubristic pride came crashing down around them.

A butler stepped out from the dining hall ringing a bell, dinnertime. Lirathe spotted Abbot slipping in with the crowd migrating into the hall. Quietly, she dropped from the flat roof of the dining hall and landed on a lower ledge, right beside a stained glass window. Shuffling across the wide ledge, Liraethe peered through the window and into the dining hall.

It was beautiful inside. Every wall was resplendent with beautiful pieces of artwork, countless Bewachen heirlooms, and old war trophies. The tables were covered in ornate doilies and dining cloths, all the dishes polished to a mirror sheen. A massive glass chandelier hung from the high vaulted ceiling, bathing the hall in a warm glow. From where Liraethe stood, she could see every individual crystal.

The nobles lazily poured into the great hall, one by one they filed into their seats, talking all the while. House slaves and servants moved in between the crowd, offering platters of fine wine and sweets for the noble ladies and lords. A pack of musicians underneath the center podium fill the air with sweet, flowing melodies.  After several minutes, the crowd settled into their seats, politely speaking with one another until the lord of the house addressed them.

The utter inanity of it all made Liraethe sick to her stomach.

Her foot tapped against the ledge anxiously. The scraping noise of her small whetstone against the sword was loud enough to have drawn attention, had anyone still been patrolling outside the hall. Liraethe counted forty-seven swords, an equal number of pistols, a small number of chain shirts and a ornate shotgun lining the walls as decorations. The only thing keeping Liraethe from clawing her own skin off was her enhanced senses allowed her to actually hear what was going on inside the hall.

After was seemed like eons of waiting, there was a small flourish as the music ended and announced the arrival of Lord Bewachen.

There he was, Sebastian Bewachen. Despite being only of dwarfish height and possessing rather average features, Lord Bewachen gave off an air of authority nonetheless. The house guards bowed their heads slightly as he passed. He was flanked by two more guards in more ornate mail, with a red sash across their chests, personal retainers.

He stepped onto a raised podium, politely tapping onto a microphone. The dull roar of the nobility died down as they turned their attention to the front of the hall.

“Esteemed guests!” he began, his voice echoed through the room, filled with delight, “Tonight we celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of Iroden, nearly twenty years ago!” There was a small round of applause, and a great white curtain descended from the wall behind the podium. A floating crystal sphere hanging in the center of the room projected images from the battle onto the screen.

“Soldiers charge over trenches by the dozen,” he continued,” Machine guns scythes down hundreds of men a minute. Poisonous gas rotted all from the inside and out. Dwarves, elves, humans and others all fought and bled together that week. Technology had made life much easier for use in many ways, but also all the more terrifying in others.” The slides provided Lord Bewachen with all evidence he needed. Some of the more sensitive of the crowd shielded their eyes from the ghastly sight.

“Of course,” Lord Bewachen began solemnly, “I lost two of my own sons that night. Edward, my eldest, would have been thirty-two just a few weeks ago. My other son Victor would be twenty-eight.” There was a slight pause, a few sniffles and stifled sobs echoed through the hall. All faked of course. Still, it never hurt to curry a bit of favor through pity, especially from a house as powerful as the Bewachen family.

“Now I-,” Lord Bewachen attempted to speak. He might have continued, had Abbot cut him off abruptly by standing, his cape rather dramatically flared behind him Liraethe noted. Several audience members gasped in surprise, adding even more melodrama to the scene at hand.

“Lord Sebastian Bewachen,” Abbot began,” you have conspired to overthrow the ruling triumvirate of the Reman Ascendancy. If you confess here now I will spare your house from oblivion and _maybe_ let you live.” Of course, Lord Bewachen would “live” in a labor camp, far from the comfy heights of Tyria’s spires.

Bewachen stared incredulously at Abbot. “This is preposterous! You come to my house on this night, of all nights, and accuse me of treason? Do you even have evidence, or do those of you in the Inquisition enjoy conjuring baseless accusations?” His normally pale face was beet red with anger, his composure lost as he fumed at Abbot.

With a weary sigh, Abbot snapped his fingers. All at once, nearly every noble in the hall, man, woman and child, filed out, with a sense of order and neatness they lacked earlier. In fact, their faces remained completely devoid of emotion at all!

Only some Bewachen’s loyal retainers remained.

All while this occurred three more men stepped into the hall. Two were dressed in more ornate yet still functionable breastplate. A badge depicting a swooping owl with a rat caught in its talons hung on their chest, complemented by a polished and clean assault rifle in a sling around their arm.

Between them they carried the third man, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Lord Sebastian Bewachen. Lord Bewachen’s face blanched to its original pale complexion at the sight of the newcomer. He could only sputter a few words.

“Wallace…how…?”

Wallace Bewachen, youngest of the Bewachen brothers had been too young to answer the call to war. As a result, he spent plenty of time around his father. Too much for his own good.

“It was drawn to my attention that the Bewachen house was having some financial trouble,” Abbot almost gloated to Lord Bewachen, “With all the interhouse wars sabotaging your mines the Bewachen family had to turn to more, ah _seedy_ avenues of monetary gain.” Abbot tapped his cane almost rhythmically with his sentence, punctuating each damning piece of evidence. The floating ball projector smashed to the ground, as if Abbot had commanded it do so.

“Of course, I sent my agents to gather information as to what you would be doing with these funds. Poor little Wallace Bewachen had been caught brokering information to the many of gangs of the squalid capitol Tyria. With all the money he had collected, the Bewachens would have easily had enough to put the city guard and perhaps the majority of the nobles in their pocket.”

Liraethe was on the verge of breaking through the glass and busting down there. Both her hearts thundered in her chest. _This is getting good,_ she gleefully thought to herself.

“Now I only have one question; why?”

Lord Bewachen no longer gave an air of authority, or seemed to command any respect. Right now, he simply looked very old, and very tired. He looked back at Abbot, regret in his eyes.  
“No.”

“So be it.”

Abbot pulled a revolver from his robes, and pointed it to the back of Wallace’s head. Lord Bewachen closed his eyes, he couldn’t bear to see another son gone.

Of course, the Bewachen house guards moved before the shot sent poor Wallace’s brains across the floor. The pair flanking Sebastian Bewachen moved in concert, firing off a volley of rounds at Abbot. Almost reflexively, the two operatives carrying Wallace stepped between Abbot and the gunfire. The guard’s volley pinged of the mithral breastplates of Abbot’s bodyguards, and the operatives both shouldered their own assault rifles and let off controlled bursts of fire, dropping four guards before they had even drawn their weapons. More operatives rushed into the room. Soon the entire dining hall was a mess of overturned tables and gunfire. Abbot calmly sat in a chair behind some makeshift cover, boredly watching the conflict at hand. Lord Bewachen quietly stepped through a door, to another part of the estate.

Liraethe crashed through the window, greatsword, point first leading the way. An unfortunate pair of Bewachen guards huddled behind an overturned table, nervously peering over their cover to squeeze of errant shots. Liraethe landed on one as he reloaded, the greatsword tearing through his flimsy chainmail and turning his internal organs to mush.

The second was somewhat luckier, he managed to fire a few rounds from his pistol. At such a short range, he couldn’t miss. Even so, most of the small caliber rounds clattered harmlessly to the ground, unable to penetrate Liraethe’s own breastplate. However, one was lucky enough to have found a soft bit of the armor, at the joint underneath Liraethe’s armpit. She almost cried out a bit at the surprise, had another round nicked her jawbone. The round had not caused serious harm, albeit it did skid rather painfully off.

Liraethe might have winced at the wound if her Lornian implant not already been pumping combat drugs into her bloodstream. Instead, it dulled the pain, and the alchemical liquids had a habit of amplifying anger.

All of Liraethe’s pent up anticipation of the this fight seemed to almost _coalesce_ into her sword. That sword, far too big for any normal man to have a hope to swing, moved like an extension of Liraethe’s subconscious, all of it directed at this poor guardsman.

Liraethe swung it more quickly than she should have been able to. She might have pulled a few muscles in her arms from swinging it so fast, but she didn’t care. All that mattered was the rush of battle, the feeling of the chaos around Liraethe and how she moved with it. Completely caught up in the high, Liraethe failed to notice how spectacularly the now-dead guard’s torso separated from his legs. She easily climbed over the overturned table and leapt into the crowd of Bewachen guards.

The guards, up against the most highly trained and well equipped soldier this side of the Loedian continent, were barely holding their own. When Liraethe, full of gleeful abandonment, leapt into their ranks, it turned into a one sided slaughter much more quickly. One guard, one Sebastian Bewachen’s personal guard, drew a thin bladed rapier from his scabbard, and made as if to duel with Liraethe.

It was rather impressive, he lasted a whole eleven seconds before Liraethe tore his throat out with her bare hands.

The last of the guards fled out of the room, after their master. The Reman operatives gunned down the slow ones, and followed the fleeing ones. Liraethe didn’t follow after them.

Looking all around her, she couldn’t help but bask at her own power. Over a dozen guards were dead, most dismembered in some fashion. Liraethe held her greatsword’s point near her face, the tip dripping with blood.

Blood.

Warm blood.

What might it taste like?

This didn’t feel right.Where was she? Liraethe looked around the room again. She saw the faces of the men she just slaughtered, all contorted in a mask of fear. Liraethe fell to one knee, sick to her stomach. Her vomit mixed with the vital fluids caking the floor. They had lives, families probably. She just stole that away from them. How-

_Liraethe._  
Just like it was from he-  
__**Liraethe**

Something wet dripped from her eyes. She reached to wipe it away. Her hand was cover-

“Liraethe!”

She looked up. Abbot stood over her, a worried expression filled his face. Liraethe might have been touched if his throat wasn’t slit open.

Reflexively, she squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head back downwards. She raised her shaking, blood smeared hand expectantly towards Abbot. A small sash of cloth filled her palm. Liraethe quickly tied the cloth around her eyes. When she opened them, the enchanted cloth let her see normally again and when she looked upon Abbot again, his throat wasn’t sliced open anymore.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

Liraethe babbled something about shoes in the Old Tongue. Unfortunately, Abbot had taken it upon himself to become familiarized with it. His face did not pale at the sound of the language, a slight grin overtook his worry, sadly enough.

“Good to hear,” he replied in Old Tongue.

Liraethe switched back to Common. “Well, not much better than whoever these guys are, a least ” She gestured around the room, to the bodies the pair had forgotten were still surrounding them. Abbot chuckled softly, but Liraethe still seemed rather grim about it.

“Try not to think about it, they died for something noble at least,” Abbot assured her, “Come on, we need to get caught up with the task force.”

Lirathe nodded, “Alright, fill me in on the way there.”

The two walked through the winding hallways of the Bewachen estate. Several operatives had flanked back and lead the pair of Inquisitors to Lord Bewachen. In the walk their, Abbot gave Liraethe an abridged version of the past thirty minutes. Liraethe silently nodded through the whole thing, letting Abbot’s words fill in the blanks her mild amnesia had left her with.

They found Sebastian Bewachen sitting quietly in a chair in the observatory. His hands cuffed but still working the observatory’s many telescopes. He gazed to the stars above, looking to the innumerable expanses of the cosmos to answers.He had chosen a rather peaceful place for his death it seemed.

A pair of operatives overlooked the lord of the now defunct house Bewachen, waiting diligently for the Executioner, for Liraethe.

“You would like to know why I planned to overthrow the government?” Lord Bewachen didn’t even turn to face Liraethe and Abbot as they arrived.

“The ruling houses are corrupt, brutal, sociopathic monsters willing to oppress any who dare dissent in the most sadistic ways possible…” He turned the chair around to face Abbot, quietly rising out of his seat.

“…and we let them. The Inquisition, the slaves, even the other nobles, with all their bluster, would kowtow to a group of delusional deranged psychopaths. I sought to end them.” He gestured to the interior of the observatory’s dome, a breathtaking painting of the gods, formed from the stars and planets. Each god was a beautifully depicted, from noble sun god Kyros to his despicable rival, the archlich Belial. However, Lord Bewachen was rather intently focussed on one, vaguely humanoid collection of stars.

“How might you think Eyir would react if it saw it’s creations doing such things to one another?” Lord Bewachen asked pointedly.

Abbot didn’t have an answer for that.

Lord Bewachen let out a resigned sigh, “Just as I thought, get it over with then.”

Lord Bewachen, last of his house, was pushed down to his knees. They lacked a chopping block, so he got to keep his head high and proud whilst Liraethe lined up a swing. Fitting, one might suppose.

Each temple of the Inquisition  had a purpose; Seekers like Abbot sought to prevent conflict before it happened, and root out any corruption. The Hunters were shadowy assassins dispatched the threats unbeknownst to the masses of the Reman Ascendency. Both of those temples were founded in times of relative security however, they were not created out of desperation.

The Executioners were a double edged sword. They were created out of fear, desperation. They could be protectors, and they sacrificed a great deal to do so. Inversely, when the Executioners were let loose upon the populace, it typically portended troubled times ahead. Liraethe was the first Executioner in over three decades to perform her role as the name of the temple implied.

As she raised her greatsword, a double edged blade symbolically and practically representing the Executioners, Liraethe’s mind was filled with emotions not of her own. The emotions spoke of sadness and relief. They thought of how happy one might be to see one’s long lost family. Liraethe eyes met Abbot’s, and he nodded in affirmation. The blade felt uncharacteristically heavy than it normally would.

_I’m sorry,_ Liraethe telepathically messaged with Abbot’s help.

The blade felt uncharacteristically heavy, much more than it normally would for one such as Liraethe

_I know,_ came the response.

Judgement was swift, but this time, with just perhaps some semblance of mercy.

  
  



End file.
